As is known in the art, fans can be used to force air flow over circuit devices to dissipate heat. This forced air cooling is a well known thermal management mechanism used for various types of electronic equipment having circuits and circuit boards. A chassis, for example, can contain slots for an array of circuit boards, e.g., blades. A fan tray having a series of fan modules can force air into the chassis to cool the blades.
Failure of one or more of the fan modules is undesirable since air flow will be reduced. With reduced air flow into the chassis, the temperature of the components and integrated circuits on the blade may rapidly exceed specified acceptable operating temperatures and stress the components. These conditions can decrease reliability of the equipment and increase the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).